An experienced developer views it critically that game worlds are tending to become larger. He believes that there is a danger in this, and that the players themselves no longer enjoy it.
Which developer is it? Josh Sawyer has been able to gather a lot of experience in his career as a game developer. He has been involved in renowned projects like Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and the hidden gem Pentiment. All are from the developer Obsidian Entertainment, which will release its new game Avowed in February 2025.
Sawyer has expressed criticism about the size of game worlds in a video on his YouTube channel. He contradicts the misconception that bigger means better.
Watch the trailer for Obsidian’s new game, Avowed, which follows its own design philosophy regarding quests:
How big is too big?
What does Josh Sawyer say? A characteristic of large and long games is that only a few players complete them. The developer himself says that he only finishes such enormous games when he is very deep into it and has already completed about 80% of it.
Whether one finishes a game at all is not that important. The fun that one has while gaming is also a priority for Sawyer when it comes to his own work. Nevertheless, he wishes that games would become smaller again.
We don’t need to get bigger. Just stop it. I don’t believe that most players want games that are six times larger than Skyrim or eight times larger than The Witcher 3.
Josh Sawyer via youtube.com
What is the problem? For Sawyer, it’s not about the long time it takes to complete massive titles. In his opinion, the quality suffers if everything has to become bigger and bigger.
The individual aspects in a game world would feel less unique and tailored, especially in an open world. A world doesn’t need to be huge to seem impressive – it’s more about the illusion that is created, less about the actual size.
Sawyer might be right: Successful role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3 seem larger than they actually are concerning their game worlds. Nevertheless, you can spend countless hours on them. According to Sawyer, the exploration of game worlds should always feel entertaining, not repetitive and tedious.
Obsidian Entertainment’s latest project, Avowed, comes without a traditional open world and is likely to be somewhat smaller than other current game worlds. We can be curious how the title will handle the manageable areas. However, Sawyer is not the only developer who criticizes the size of current games: A developer from Starfield says: Many gamers are tired of having to invest over 30 or 100 hours into a single game
